akistan and Israel
are the only two states in the world to be created in the name of a particular
religious community: Pakistan for Muslims, Israel for Jews. Both have been in
the news recently and neither presents a pretty picture. Claiming to be acting
in the name of Allah, terrorists nurtured on Pakistani soil perpetrated Mumbai
and India’s 26/11. Meanwhile, by its criminal and inhuman assault on Gaza the
Israeli state has not for the first time proved two things. One, that victims of
the Holocaust are themselves capable of subjecting others to similar horrors.
Two, that contrary to a widely held belief, terrorism is not always a weapon of
the weak: state terrorism too is an ugly reality. What’s worse, both Pakistan
and Israel continue in their state of denial. Ironically, thus far the US has
been among the staunchest allies of both countries and has much explaining to do
for the birth of ‘jihadi’ terror in one case and state terror in the other.
For weeks the Pakistan government pretended that India has no
"evidence" of the involvement of their "non-state actors" in the 26/11 outrage.
Under persistent international pressure it is at last showing some signs of
acceptance and willingness to bring the guilty to book. Whether it is merely
trying to buy time, whether the trial it promises will be nothing more than a
mockery of justice, remains to be seen. But what is no longer in doubt is the
love and care with which successive governments in Pakistan, its army and the
rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have nurtured numerous malevolent
non-state actors on Pakistani soil. An unholy mix of religion and violence has
given birth to a permanent global ‘jihad’. And the targets of this ill-conceived
jihad are not only ‘infidels’ in India or the West but also fellow Muslims with
a different world view. Vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan, it is also apparent
that for years terrorist non-state actors have been an integral part of the
foreign policy of the Pakistani state.
And it is not we who say this. In this special issue of
Communalism Combat, we have left it to writers, academics, journalists,
social activists and ordinary citizens of Pakistan to do all the talking. To
quote one of them: "Our country (Pakistan) is now the breeding ground for the
most violent ideologies and the most vicious gangs of thugs who kill in the name
of religion… What we conveniently forget is that for most of the last two
decades the army and the ISI used these very jihadis to further their agenda in
Kashmir and Afghanistan. This long official link has given various terror groups
legitimacy and a domestic base that has now come to haunt us" (Irfan Husain). In
other words, an umbilical cord links the vicious non-state actors to the state
actors in Pakistan. Pakistan poses a great danger today, not only to its
neighbours and the international community: "In virtually every Islamic
terrorist plot, whether it is successful or not, there is a Pakistani angle."
But the greatest danger is that Pakistan itself is on the brink of implosion.
This however is not to endorse the battle cry for a war against
Pakistan, for hot pursuit or targeting or for a pre-emptive attack on the terror
camps in Pakistan. If nothing else, the presence of nuclear arsenals on both
sides of the border alone should be sufficient reason for us to refrain from
jingoism and warmongering. What is needed is sustained pressure from the
international community to force Pakistan to wipe out all the nurseries of
terror from its soil.
At the same time, it is not enough for India to merely lead or
participate in this international effort. It is equally important that we put
our own house in order by dealing firmly with all forms of terror groups
operating within our own country. The 1984 carnage against Sikhs, the 1992
demolition of the Babri Masjid followed by the anti-Muslim pogrom in Mumbai, and
the 2002 genocidal targeting of Gujarat’s Muslims pushed a small section of
Sikhs and Muslims to respond to ‘mob terror’ with ‘bomb terror’. In
mid-September last year union home minister, P. Chidambaram, who was then
finance minister, warned that he feared "new waves of terror" arising out of the
growing alienation of India’s minorities. "Out of the hopelessness and despair
of the Muslim community – and if not addressed firmly, the Christian tribal
communities (remember Orissa) too – will rise new waves of terror," he had
warned. The investigations of the Anti-Terrorism Squad of the Maharashtra police
in the Nanded blasts (2006) and the Malegaon, Thane and Panvel blasts (2008)
have uncovered the emergence of ‘Hindu terror’ at least since 2003. Similar
incidents of Hindu terror have also been unveiled by the Kerala and Tamil Nadu
police in the past year. It is clearly not enough to point fingers at Pakistan.
We have to learn how to deal with our own home-grown terror of different hues.
We were working on a special November-December 2008 issue of
CC focusing on the situation of India’s minorities when 26/11 torpedoed our
plan; we had to shelve it and start thinking afresh. We sincerely apologise to
all our readers for the resulting delay in publishing this issue.
